Replying to one of Orlando's queries... - Fsf-friends

18 Dec 2002


      On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Orlando Fernandes wrote:
...
btw can anyone tell me how Richard make his money, did he always have it?
did he have to work for it? or did he get it fre 'cause he gave all his code
away for free?
Orlando
This is from Sam Willians' book *Free as in Freedom*, the
    biography of RMS (aka Richard M. Stallman). Look at the 
        amazing way in which sharing begets further sharing:
"In 1990, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
    certified Stallman's genius status when it granted Stallman
    a MacArthur fellowship, thereby making him a recipient
    for the organisation's so-called "genuis grant". The grant,
    a $240,000 (sorry for getting this figure wrong earlier-FN)
    reward for launching the GNU Project and giving voice to the
    free software philosophy, relieved a number of short-term
    concerns. First and foremost, it gave Stallman, a non-salaried
    employee of the FSF who had been supporting himself through
    consulting contracts, the ability to devote more time to
    writing GNU code.
"Ironically, the award also made it possible for Stallman to
    vote. Months before the award, a fire in Stallman's apartment
    house had consumed his few earthly possessions. By the time
    of the award, Stallman was listing himself a 'squatter' at
    545 Technology Square. "[The registrar of voters] didn't want
    to accept that as my address," Stallman would later recall.
    "A newspaper article about the MacArthur grant said that and
    then they let me register."
"Most important, the MacArthur money gave Stallman more
    freedom. Already dedicated to the issue of software freedom,
    Stallman chose to use the additional freedom to increase his
    travels in support of the GNU Project mission.
"Interestingly, the ultimate success of the GNU Project
    and the free software movement in general would stem from one
    of these trips. In 1990, Stallman paid a visit to the
    Polytechnic University in Helsinki, Finland. Among the
    audience members was 21-year-old Linux Torvalds, future
    developer of the Linux kernel -- the free software kernel
    destined to fill the GNU Project's most sizeable gap."
Read this book if you can. Ironically, it's freely copyable under the GNU
Free Documentation License. Maybe our FSF-India friends could think of
getting some publisher publishing a low-cost (or possibly
updated) version of it for India.
I know some young programmers who swear that their views on programming
were drastically changed after reading this book. FN